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France's Annecy Festival to Show Toei's Niji-Iro Hotaru Film

France's 2012 Annecy, the world's largest animation festival, added Toei's Niji-Iro Hotaru (Rainbow-Colored Fireflies: The Eternal Summer Vacation) film to its lineup in the non-competitive category on its official website. In this film, Konosuke Uda (One Piece, Galaxy Express 999: Eternal Fantasy) adapts Masayuki Kawaguchi's original fantasy novel of the same name.

The story revolves around a sixth-grade boy named Yūta (Akashi Takei) on his summer vacation. His father passed away one year ago in a traffic accident, and Yūta now goes alone to visit a place where he and his father once shared memories. The two had gone often to an unused dam deep in the mountains to collect the rhinoceros beetles nearby. Yūta suddenly receives a shock in a thunderstorm, loses his footing, and gets knocked out. When he wakes up, he see a small girl and a village — except this village is the one that should be submerged below the dam. Yūta realizes that he slipped back time to over thirty years ago, before the dam was completed. Another summer vacation, and another chance for Yūta to reclaim what cannot be reclaimed, begins.

The festival will screen a number of Japanese works including Keiichi Satou's (Tiger & Bunny, Karas) and Toei's feature film adaptation of George Akiyama's 1970-1971 Ashura manga as well as Makoto Shinkai's Children Who Chase Lost Voices from Deep Below. These two films will be in the competition portion of the festival. The festival will also showBerserk Ōgon Jidai-Hen I: Haō no Tamago, the first film in Studio 4°C's film trilogy based on the Berserk manga, and Hiroyuki Okiura and Production I.G's A Letter to Momo film outside of competition.

As for shorts, Annecy will screen Katsuhiro Otomo's "Hi-no-youjin" or "Combustible" anime short in competition.
Shin Hashimoto's "Beluga," Akihito Izuhara's "LI.LI.TA.AL," Mirai Mizue's "Modern No. 2," Florian Piento's French-Japanese production "The People Who Never Stop," Syuhei Morita's "Tsukumo," and Ayaka Nakata and Yuki Sakitani's "Yonalure: Moment to Moment" will also compete in the same Short Films category as "Hi-no-youjin."

The first Blue Exorcist episode will be in the TV series category, while Masaki Okuda, Ryo Okawara, and Yutaro Ogawa's Art Path 2011 "Count Down" will be in the Advertising Films category. Several student films round out Japan's roster at the festival.

The film festival takes place June 4-9 in Annecy, France. Niji-Iro Hotaru is set to premiere in Japan on Saturday.

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